something that has become somewhat overlooked as time has marched on is disk defragmentation. it used to be a pretty big deal to defrag your computer, and depending on the computer, it could have been a lengthy process, something you had to do and couldn't do anything on the computer while it was going. it sucked
on my vista computer, it automatically performs a defrag at 4am every morning. it's beyond my knowledge what exactly defraging does, but think of it like this; you have a lawn in fall, theres leaves all over it. Are you going to see more grass if you rake them all into a nice pile? yep. That's defraging, except instead of a lawn, it's your hard drive, and instead of leaves, its bits and bytes of memory
so, in order to defrag, press start, all programs, accessories, system tools, disk defragmenter. In the window that pops up, click on analyze, and it will let you know whether or not you should defrag. If you should, all you have to do is click Defragment, and you're all set
This next trick is for people who download things using P2P software; limewire, bearshare, azureus, utorrent, etc. I see this with my mom all the time, she'll download an album, copy it to her ipod, then leave the music on her hard drive, thinking its gone. tisk tisk mother.
My downloading program is Utorrent, its a great program. Every program you use to download things is going to have whats called a default directory, this is the folder that all your downloads go to. To find your default directory, the option to change it is usually in to be found in a "preferences", "options" or "settings" menu. Just make sure if you're downloading things, you keep track of where what you downloaded is. Say you download season 2 of the sarah connor chronicles, and it's zipped, well after you unzip it, the original zip file doesn't just dissapear, you still have to go back and delete it, otherwise you'll have the season zipped and unzipped, just taking up space when it's not being used
Speaking of downloads, keep in mind when you're downloading songs, if the extension is FLAC, it's going to take up A LOT more room then a wav, or mp3, just keep that in mind. Also I've noticed with video that .rm extensions are usually bigger as well (pesky realplayer, blah)
If you're a picture person, those can add up to a lot of space very quickly. You might try something like uploading all your pictures to a site that will host them for free like flickr, or even facebook and myspace. After they've been uploaded, you could delete them off your hard drive and that'd be that. If for whatever reason you needed to email the pictures, or wanted to edit them, all you'd have to do is go to the picture, right click and save image as, and you have it again on your hard drive
Another idea is say you have a large number of files you don't want to get rid of, but dont really ever look at, like a bunch of old word documents, powerpoints, and midis, you could use a program like winzip, winace, or 7zip to zip them all up and then thats more room saved
There are tons of little ways to clear up room, but nothing beats simply deleting the files you dont want, or dont use. Just make sure you know exactly what you're deleting, and you'll be just fine. Hope this helped some people, till next time
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tips to clear space on your hard drive
Hello, today I'm gonna talk about some relatively simple ways to clear space on your hard drive. These are things that I do usually about once a month, but maybe that's a little bit of my crazy OCD coming out :)
***note that this applies to windows computers
The first and probably easiest thing to do is to clear your temp folders. First, click the start button, and on the bottom right you should see an option that says 'run'. click that. (if you don't see it, or are running vista, the hotkey is windowskey+r). In the run box type "temp", and just go nuts! Seriously everything in here can and should be deleted. These files can slow down your computer when you're starting up and can bog down some programs load time. If you've never done this before you may be surprised at how many files there can be.
Next, get back to your run box, and this time type in %temp%, this will bring up another temp folder with more files to delete, again, all perfectly safe to delete.
Performing these two steps alone on my friend who's computer was a year old and had never been cleaned before cleared off 1.4 gigs for him.
So, another trick: disk cleanup:
First step is to get to 'My Computer'. I have a shortcut to My Computer right on my desktop, but you can also access it by clicking the start button, and you should see it on the top right hand corner. Now go to 'Local Disk(C:)' and right click, go down to 'properties'.
On the 'General' tab you'll see a pie chart showing how much used and free space you have on that drive. To the right of that chart you'll see 'Disk Cleanup', click that. A little box will appear to scan how much space you can free up, let it do it's thing, sometimes it can take a really long time if you don't do this too often.
You can go ahead and check everything, and it will let you know how much space will be cleared up. As I'm sitting on this school computer in the library, it Disk Cleanup is saying it will clean up 6,861,745kb, that's about 6861mb, or 6.8gb. That's a lot of space just being wasted. This computer has a 140gb harddrive, and 6.8 of that is being wasted, so just go ahead and click ok when you're ready. It may take a while, especially if you're having it compress old files, but its worth it.
Next is a more personalized section, in that not everyone is going to be able to clear out as much space. A lot of times I'll download programs that I'll only use once or twice, like a program to edit a .gif, or one to splice a video, or I'll just download a program to check it out like google earth. Well you do that enough and eventually you'll have a lot of files sitting on your c drive that you never use.
To remedy this, click your start button, and go to the 'Control Panel' on the right hand side. Go to "add or remove programs". Now take a look at the list, comb through it, and delete what you dont use by clicking the "Change/Remove" button. BUT! you must be careful here. General rule of thumb unless you really know what you're doing is that if you don't know what it is or what it does, leave it alone. You don't want to uninstall something important.
If you did, you could always use system restore, which will lead me into my last trick: adjusting the amount of space reserved for system restore.
Unless you are really confident in your computing skills, or everything important you have is backed up externally, or you just plain dont care and want the space, I wouldn't recommend doing this. If you don't know, system restore can be used if your computer has become infected, or if you deleted an important system file accidently, to bring your computer back to the state it was at a certain "restore point"
A restore point is like a point in time where your computers files are frozen, and saved in memory. You run system restore and go to the restore point you wanted to, let it do it's thing, and then that will take care of a lot of problems. This is a very powerful and very useful tool
Unfortunately to do this requires quite a bit of space on your hard drive. This computer uses 12%...18gb, to hold the restore points. It's possible to greatly reduce this, but again, let me warn you that unless you're externally backed up this might not be the best idea...but lets learn anyways!
click your start button --> all programs --> accessories --> system tools --> system restore
this will bring up the system restore window, where you can click "System Restore Settings" on the left hand side of the screen. This brings up another window, where you can click "Settings" on the right hand side. This window that pops up will have a slider on it that adjusts how much space is reserved for restore points. If you completely disable it, then you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE SYSTEM RESTORE. If you lower it from whatever it is, you will have fewer restore points, lowering the chances of system restore being useful. You have to be careful here, but this has the potential to free up a lot of space
So I've gone over 4 different ways to clear space on your hard drive. Cleaning your temp folders, disk cleanup, uninstalling old programs, and system restore settings. There are of course many other ways to clear space off, I'll go over some more later.
till then,
may the force be with you!
***note that this applies to windows computers
The first and probably easiest thing to do is to clear your temp folders. First, click the start button, and on the bottom right you should see an option that says 'run'. click that. (if you don't see it, or are running vista, the hotkey is windowskey+r). In the run box type "temp", and just go nuts! Seriously everything in here can and should be deleted. These files can slow down your computer when you're starting up and can bog down some programs load time. If you've never done this before you may be surprised at how many files there can be.
Next, get back to your run box, and this time type in %temp%, this will bring up another temp folder with more files to delete, again, all perfectly safe to delete.
Performing these two steps alone on my friend who's computer was a year old and had never been cleaned before cleared off 1.4 gigs for him.
So, another trick: disk cleanup:
First step is to get to 'My Computer'. I have a shortcut to My Computer right on my desktop, but you can also access it by clicking the start button, and you should see it on the top right hand corner. Now go to 'Local Disk(C:)' and right click, go down to 'properties'.
On the 'General' tab you'll see a pie chart showing how much used and free space you have on that drive. To the right of that chart you'll see 'Disk Cleanup', click that. A little box will appear to scan how much space you can free up, let it do it's thing, sometimes it can take a really long time if you don't do this too often.
You can go ahead and check everything, and it will let you know how much space will be cleared up. As I'm sitting on this school computer in the library, it Disk Cleanup is saying it will clean up 6,861,745kb, that's about 6861mb, or 6.8gb. That's a lot of space just being wasted. This computer has a 140gb harddrive, and 6.8 of that is being wasted, so just go ahead and click ok when you're ready. It may take a while, especially if you're having it compress old files, but its worth it.
Next is a more personalized section, in that not everyone is going to be able to clear out as much space. A lot of times I'll download programs that I'll only use once or twice, like a program to edit a .gif, or one to splice a video, or I'll just download a program to check it out like google earth. Well you do that enough and eventually you'll have a lot of files sitting on your c drive that you never use.
To remedy this, click your start button, and go to the 'Control Panel' on the right hand side. Go to "add or remove programs". Now take a look at the list, comb through it, and delete what you dont use by clicking the "Change/Remove" button. BUT! you must be careful here. General rule of thumb unless you really know what you're doing is that if you don't know what it is or what it does, leave it alone. You don't want to uninstall something important.
If you did, you could always use system restore, which will lead me into my last trick: adjusting the amount of space reserved for system restore.
Unless you are really confident in your computing skills, or everything important you have is backed up externally, or you just plain dont care and want the space, I wouldn't recommend doing this. If you don't know, system restore can be used if your computer has become infected, or if you deleted an important system file accidently, to bring your computer back to the state it was at a certain "restore point"
A restore point is like a point in time where your computers files are frozen, and saved in memory. You run system restore and go to the restore point you wanted to, let it do it's thing, and then that will take care of a lot of problems. This is a very powerful and very useful tool
Unfortunately to do this requires quite a bit of space on your hard drive. This computer uses 12%...18gb, to hold the restore points. It's possible to greatly reduce this, but again, let me warn you that unless you're externally backed up this might not be the best idea...but lets learn anyways!
click your start button --> all programs --> accessories --> system tools --> system restore
this will bring up the system restore window, where you can click "System Restore Settings" on the left hand side of the screen. This brings up another window, where you can click "Settings" on the right hand side. This window that pops up will have a slider on it that adjusts how much space is reserved for restore points. If you completely disable it, then you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE SYSTEM RESTORE. If you lower it from whatever it is, you will have fewer restore points, lowering the chances of system restore being useful. You have to be careful here, but this has the potential to free up a lot of space
So I've gone over 4 different ways to clear space on your hard drive. Cleaning your temp folders, disk cleanup, uninstalling old programs, and system restore settings. There are of course many other ways to clear space off, I'll go over some more later.
till then,
may the force be with you!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Computer Networking Woes
I'm a computer networking major at Wentworth Institute of Technology
leaving out the bs classes everyone has to take, let me show you my first year of computer classes
Computer Science 1 (C++)
Programing Logic and Design
Computer Science 2 (C++)
Intro to Networks, Services, and the WWW
next semester will be
Object Oriented Programming (Java)
Computer Architecture
Operating Systems Concepts
do you see the disconnect there?
When you ask someone what exactly computer networking is, it can be tough to get a straight answer. Ask the computer science majors and they'll say it's the "easy" computer major. Ask average Jane on the street and she'll have no idea. There are misconceptions about this major
From other networking students I've talked to, this isn't just a local issue. I'm not here to whine about my college, it's just an issue I'd like to talk about
First, lets look at what a Network Administrator does. It's someone who's responsible for maintaining the equipment that lets networks operate. They make sure everyone is connected to the network and can talk to each other, share resources, etc. They deal with Network Operating Systems to do this. Also under their purview is designing and implementing networks, as well as looking to their security
These are all pretty important things...it's a job that warrants a full time position, not something that should be taken care of alongside of other duties
In offering the Computer Networking major, schools are doing students a disservice by shoving so much computer science down peoples throats. Network professionals are a vital part of the IT team, and it seems like they don't get the respect that they deserve
However, since I've been forced to deal with so much computer science, I've found out more about a very interesting career path that requires high skill in both networking and programming, that path being a Malware Analyst. In my earlier posts I've made it pretty clear that I'm quite interested in malware. A Malware analysts has to be able to look at infectious code and see what it's doing (programing knowledge component) and they have to also understand how it's propagating (networking component). Once these facts are understood, they can go about coming up with a fix
In creating malware, people are showing extensive programming skills, and then in figuring out clever ways to propagate the malware they show good networking skills
ok so maybe that's a bad example, but people! Networking is important! I hope people won't be so quick to dismiss it out of hand in the future
leaving out the bs classes everyone has to take, let me show you my first year of computer classes
Computer Science 1 (C++)
Programing Logic and Design
Computer Science 2 (C++)
Intro to Networks, Services, and the WWW
next semester will be
Object Oriented Programming (Java)
Computer Architecture
Operating Systems Concepts
do you see the disconnect there?
When you ask someone what exactly computer networking is, it can be tough to get a straight answer. Ask the computer science majors and they'll say it's the "easy" computer major. Ask average Jane on the street and she'll have no idea. There are misconceptions about this major
From other networking students I've talked to, this isn't just a local issue. I'm not here to whine about my college, it's just an issue I'd like to talk about
First, lets look at what a Network Administrator does. It's someone who's responsible for maintaining the equipment that lets networks operate. They make sure everyone is connected to the network and can talk to each other, share resources, etc. They deal with Network Operating Systems to do this. Also under their purview is designing and implementing networks, as well as looking to their security
These are all pretty important things...it's a job that warrants a full time position, not something that should be taken care of alongside of other duties
In offering the Computer Networking major, schools are doing students a disservice by shoving so much computer science down peoples throats. Network professionals are a vital part of the IT team, and it seems like they don't get the respect that they deserve
However, since I've been forced to deal with so much computer science, I've found out more about a very interesting career path that requires high skill in both networking and programming, that path being a Malware Analyst. In my earlier posts I've made it pretty clear that I'm quite interested in malware. A Malware analysts has to be able to look at infectious code and see what it's doing (programing knowledge component) and they have to also understand how it's propagating (networking component). Once these facts are understood, they can go about coming up with a fix
In creating malware, people are showing extensive programming skills, and then in figuring out clever ways to propagate the malware they show good networking skills
ok so maybe that's a bad example, but people! Networking is important! I hope people won't be so quick to dismiss it out of hand in the future
Monday, April 27, 2009
Torrents vs Limewire
Here is one of my absolute favorite topics to write about!
It should be noted that the term illegal here might not be what you think. It is not illegal to use limewire to download files, or torrents for that matter. What IS illegal is the downloading of copyrighted material
Everyone downloads music and movies, legally or illegally. I wanna say off the bat that I'm not advocating downloading music or movies illegally, I'm just here to say that when I hear people say they use programs like Limewire or Emule I want to slap them in the face a few times
But why?
Limewire is great for getting music
Torrents are too hard to figure out, and you can't just download one song
Torrents take forever and slow down the internet
...that's when the slap comes
You'll find me picking on Limewire the most, only because it seems to be the most popular, and though I pick on it, that's not to say torrents are absolutely safe either, but first, lets list the REAL advantages of each...
Limewire
* quick search engine
* ability to quickly download individual files
* indexes everyone connected to the network
* very easy to upload/download
Torrents
* can download entire albums (can also download individual files despite popular belief)
* larger files will download quickly (given enough seeds/leeches)
* greater sense of security (this should be the selling point to EVERYONE)
* torrent sites will have comment sections to tell the validity of the file
So what's so risky about Limewire anyways? Think of it like this, this is a Peer to Peer network. You want to download YMCA.mp3? You run YMCA into the search engine and get however many hits, you go, you download the song, and play it when it's done. At no point is YMCA.mp3 being uploaded to a server and scanned for malicious code, you're pulling it off some strangers computer and just trusting to run it.
How about this scenario; you search YMCA, and go to download YMCA.mp3, you go to run it and it's a Coheed and Cambria song that some punk just renamed to confuse you. Ok no harm done.
try this scenario; you search YMCA and go to download YMCA.exe! I think most tech savvy people who would read know the difference between .mp3 and .exe, but if anyone doesnt, .mp3 is an extension for music files, while .exe's are extensions for executable files, the kind that install things on your computer. Things like trojans. Bad news bears.
different scenario: you want to download a program, photoshop. You're expecting a .exe of a pretty big file size. But have you heard of file binding? Check this out. You can hide .exe files in each other, say something like an installer for the bandook trojan (really an interesting one, read about it here). Lets say it's called bandook.exe, and someone decides to bind that to photoshop.exe. You download photoshop.exe and run it, and in the background, bandook.exe installs itself. oops! there goes your computer
Ever download a video only to have it tell you that you need to download a special player in order to watch it? Don't do that ;)
Now of course all these problems exist in torrent files as well, but torrents have more security measures in place. Private trackers that require membership to the site often scan files to death to ensure that they're legit. Many sites will have a comments section where people who have already downloaded the file can say if the file is a fake, or is infected, and then you can move to have the torrent taken down and the person who uploaded it banned
People complain that you can't download individual files with torrents, you have to get the whole package. wrong, there is always a way to uncheck the files that you don't want to download
People complain that it takes longer to download files, and that it will slow down the network that they're on. This is true, it will slow it down, but that's such a small price to pay for the huge increase in security you get from downloading torrents. And if you want say the entire season of a popular show like Lost, grab the torrent and you'll be amazed at how quickly it goes, quicker then any Limewire download. Even not so popular shows will download fairly quickly
My only problem with torrents is that they're a little difficult for someone who's just started to get into. First you need a program to do the actual downloading, utorrent, bitcommet, bitlord, and azureus are some popular ones. Then once the program is downloaded, you may need to configure some settings like which port to use to download files, and what your connection speed is. Some people may get confused and frustrated at this point. After you manage to configure everything, you need to download a .torrent file. Say you want to download South Park season 4, you would go to a site like thepiratebay.org, mininova.com, demonoid.com, or torrentz.com (kind of like the google of torrents) and you would search South Park, find it, download, and it would finish right away and a lot of people get confused at that, they don't realize that they didn't just download South Park, they downloaded what can be considered a ticket, and when they run that ticket, it'll pass the South Park torrents information to the download program they use, and THATS when the real download starts
Then sometimes the download wont start at all! This could be because a certain port is blocked that you need open to download with, or because there aren't enough peers on, that is, people who have the file, or parts of the file, and are giving it to you. Seeders = Uploaders, Leechers = Downloaders, you'll usually see a S/L section letting you know how many people are uploading/downloading the file. If you see 0 seeders, don't even bother
Check out this tutorial if you're interested in learning more:
Hope this helped any wayward people that download things and aren't doing so via torrents. Always remember to keep your firewall ON and your antivirus program up to date, and scan everything you download!
Happy pirating!
It should be noted that the term illegal here might not be what you think. It is not illegal to use limewire to download files, or torrents for that matter. What IS illegal is the downloading of copyrighted material
Everyone downloads music and movies, legally or illegally. I wanna say off the bat that I'm not advocating downloading music or movies illegally, I'm just here to say that when I hear people say they use programs like Limewire or Emule I want to slap them in the face a few times
But why?
Limewire is great for getting music
Torrents are too hard to figure out, and you can't just download one song
Torrents take forever and slow down the internet
...that's when the slap comes
You'll find me picking on Limewire the most, only because it seems to be the most popular, and though I pick on it, that's not to say torrents are absolutely safe either, but first, lets list the REAL advantages of each...
Limewire
* quick search engine
* ability to quickly download individual files
* indexes everyone connected to the network
* very easy to upload/download
Torrents
* can download entire albums (can also download individual files despite popular belief)
* larger files will download quickly (given enough seeds/leeches)
* greater sense of security (this should be the selling point to EVERYONE)
* torrent sites will have comment sections to tell the validity of the file
So what's so risky about Limewire anyways? Think of it like this, this is a Peer to Peer network. You want to download YMCA.mp3? You run YMCA into the search engine and get however many hits, you go, you download the song, and play it when it's done. At no point is YMCA.mp3 being uploaded to a server and scanned for malicious code, you're pulling it off some strangers computer and just trusting to run it.
How about this scenario; you search YMCA, and go to download YMCA.mp3, you go to run it and it's a Coheed and Cambria song that some punk just renamed to confuse you. Ok no harm done.
try this scenario; you search YMCA and go to download YMCA.exe! I think most tech savvy people who would read know the difference between .mp3 and .exe, but if anyone doesnt, .mp3 is an extension for music files, while .exe's are extensions for executable files, the kind that install things on your computer. Things like trojans. Bad news bears.
different scenario: you want to download a program, photoshop. You're expecting a .exe of a pretty big file size. But have you heard of file binding? Check this out. You can hide .exe files in each other, say something like an installer for the bandook trojan (really an interesting one, read about it here). Lets say it's called bandook.exe, and someone decides to bind that to photoshop.exe. You download photoshop.exe and run it, and in the background, bandook.exe installs itself. oops! there goes your computer
Ever download a video only to have it tell you that you need to download a special player in order to watch it? Don't do that ;)
Now of course all these problems exist in torrent files as well, but torrents have more security measures in place. Private trackers that require membership to the site often scan files to death to ensure that they're legit. Many sites will have a comments section where people who have already downloaded the file can say if the file is a fake, or is infected, and then you can move to have the torrent taken down and the person who uploaded it banned
People complain that you can't download individual files with torrents, you have to get the whole package. wrong, there is always a way to uncheck the files that you don't want to download
People complain that it takes longer to download files, and that it will slow down the network that they're on. This is true, it will slow it down, but that's such a small price to pay for the huge increase in security you get from downloading torrents. And if you want say the entire season of a popular show like Lost, grab the torrent and you'll be amazed at how quickly it goes, quicker then any Limewire download. Even not so popular shows will download fairly quickly
My only problem with torrents is that they're a little difficult for someone who's just started to get into. First you need a program to do the actual downloading, utorrent, bitcommet, bitlord, and azureus are some popular ones. Then once the program is downloaded, you may need to configure some settings like which port to use to download files, and what your connection speed is. Some people may get confused and frustrated at this point. After you manage to configure everything, you need to download a .torrent file. Say you want to download South Park season 4, you would go to a site like thepiratebay.org, mininova.com, demonoid.com, or torrentz.com (kind of like the google of torrents) and you would search South Park, find it, download, and it would finish right away and a lot of people get confused at that, they don't realize that they didn't just download South Park, they downloaded what can be considered a ticket, and when they run that ticket, it'll pass the South Park torrents information to the download program they use, and THATS when the real download starts
Then sometimes the download wont start at all! This could be because a certain port is blocked that you need open to download with, or because there aren't enough peers on, that is, people who have the file, or parts of the file, and are giving it to you. Seeders = Uploaders, Leechers = Downloaders, you'll usually see a S/L section letting you know how many people are uploading/downloading the file. If you see 0 seeders, don't even bother
Check out this tutorial if you're interested in learning more:
Hope this helped any wayward people that download things and aren't doing so via torrents. Always remember to keep your firewall ON and your antivirus program up to date, and scan everything you download!
Happy pirating!
Hijack what?
Hijackthis
Hijackthis is a computer program. Despite what you may think upon hearing the name, it's not a virus, and it won't let someone else control your computer. Hijackthis scans every running process on your computer at the time it's run, and then gives you the option to stop it from running by deleting the files associated with it
That means that it's an extremely powerful diagnostic tool, but, in the hands of the inexperienced, it can spell death and doom. Delete a wrong entry and suddenly you'll find youself lacking some key functionality (a classmate of mine deleted an entry tied in to his built in fingerprint scanner and no more scanning)
But I'm getting a little off track. For those who don't understand what something like this can do for you (and those too lazy to run google searches) think of it like this: you've been getting pop ups like crazy when you browse the net, it takes 2-3 minutes after you log on to windows to load your desktop, and you're running low on disk space for seemingly no reason. You could download and run hijackthis, and use it's feature to scan as well as create a log file and then post that log file on a website such as this one. People who know all about this kind of stuff will scan the logs, and then post advice on what to do to clean up your systems
An important thing to keep in mind when dealing with sites like that is that they are free services, and will come with the disclaimer that if you accept their help, and something gets further damaged, they can't be held responsible. Something I've done when I used to ask for help on those sites is checked out whoever responded to me, checked to see how many other people they've helped, stuff like that
I wont go into detail on how to safely use hijackthis, as there are tons of variables, but this video offers a pretty good tutorial:
remember, if you don't know what you're doing when using this program, ask for help. There are so many sites that you could go to to get it...just google "hijackthis log help". Be polite, be courteous, be patient, and be descriptive, and you wont be dissapointed
PS: when I get my site up and hosted (haven't even come up with a domain yet) I eventually plan on making a forum for hijackthis logs, so if anyone with HJT experience wants to know when that's up and would like to help, keep your eye on this blog
Hijackthis is a computer program. Despite what you may think upon hearing the name, it's not a virus, and it won't let someone else control your computer. Hijackthis scans every running process on your computer at the time it's run, and then gives you the option to stop it from running by deleting the files associated with it
That means that it's an extremely powerful diagnostic tool, but, in the hands of the inexperienced, it can spell death and doom. Delete a wrong entry and suddenly you'll find youself lacking some key functionality (a classmate of mine deleted an entry tied in to his built in fingerprint scanner and no more scanning)
But I'm getting a little off track. For those who don't understand what something like this can do for you (and those too lazy to run google searches) think of it like this: you've been getting pop ups like crazy when you browse the net, it takes 2-3 minutes after you log on to windows to load your desktop, and you're running low on disk space for seemingly no reason. You could download and run hijackthis, and use it's feature to scan as well as create a log file and then post that log file on a website such as this one. People who know all about this kind of stuff will scan the logs, and then post advice on what to do to clean up your systems
An important thing to keep in mind when dealing with sites like that is that they are free services, and will come with the disclaimer that if you accept their help, and something gets further damaged, they can't be held responsible. Something I've done when I used to ask for help on those sites is checked out whoever responded to me, checked to see how many other people they've helped, stuff like that
I wont go into detail on how to safely use hijackthis, as there are tons of variables, but this video offers a pretty good tutorial:
remember, if you don't know what you're doing when using this program, ask for help. There are so many sites that you could go to to get it...just google "hijackthis log help". Be polite, be courteous, be patient, and be descriptive, and you wont be dissapointed
PS: when I get my site up and hosted (haven't even come up with a domain yet) I eventually plan on making a forum for hijackthis logs, so if anyone with HJT experience wants to know when that's up and would like to help, keep your eye on this blog
Teaching tech skills to others
I'm a computer networking major. IT is in my blood, it's what I do.
What is IT?
Information Technology
INFORMATION, not Information sharing
A lot of professionals I've worked with and studied under seem to have this perception. This idea that teaching end users anything is something beneath them. There exists an acronym for particularly error producing users, PEBCAC: problem exists between computer and chair
Is it better to give a poor man a fish so he can eat that night, or to teach him to fish that he might eat every night? While some users might not be open to learning new things, if someone asks me how I fixed a problem, then I'm happy to explain. There seems to be an overblown sense of pride among some IT people; if they don't understand how we fix their problems, then it makes us seem all the more important
Such thinking isn't very productive. Now I'm all for taking pride in your work, and I don't really think it's prudent to explain to a user something like grid computing, or any far our concept like that, but if they ask you why they're getting a message saying they're running low on virtual memory, would it be such a terrible thing to tell them they're running too many applications at once?
No one wants to deal with someone like that, someone who refuses to teach just creates an unpleasant work environment for everyone. IT certainly isn't the only field that suffers from people like this, it's everywhere. The biggest example that comes to mind is the medical field. Several family members of mine are involved in medicine, many of them are nurses. Many of the doctors they work with like to keep them on a tight leash as they're "only nurses" and must not know very much about medicine
So to the IT people out there reading this, do me a favor, and if someone asks for a little knowledge, hook them up
During my work at the IT center for the VA hospital (which is staffed mostly with army vets, older folk) I would respond to problems that people submitted via a ticketing system. I would find this persons desk or office, and would take care of whatever problem they had, or if I could not, I'd direct them to who could fix their problem
When I would find the person, I'd go through a little friendly chit chat, a lot of times if there was a serious problem it was pretty obvious that the user was nervous that they had messed something up; bringing it down to a more casual level helps to calm the person down a bit, and a little networking never hurts
I would then take a look at the computer and try to find the problem, if the user would watch me work then I would try to explain to them the basics of what I was doing, which directory I was going into (outdated drivers were a huge problem, think 60% of most tickets) or why I was using a specific command like msconfig. Then upon finding the problem, I'd let the user know what had happened and would tell them whether or not it was a quick fix. All in all I did the best I could to create a friendly, passive environment for the user. Also of course if asked any questions I'd do my best to answer them
So an overview of some tips to keep in mind when helping others:
Remember; "To teach, is to learn twice"
What is IT?
Information Technology
INFORMATION, not Information sharing
A lot of professionals I've worked with and studied under seem to have this perception. This idea that teaching end users anything is something beneath them. There exists an acronym for particularly error producing users, PEBCAC: problem exists between computer and chair
Is it better to give a poor man a fish so he can eat that night, or to teach him to fish that he might eat every night? While some users might not be open to learning new things, if someone asks me how I fixed a problem, then I'm happy to explain. There seems to be an overblown sense of pride among some IT people; if they don't understand how we fix their problems, then it makes us seem all the more important
Such thinking isn't very productive. Now I'm all for taking pride in your work, and I don't really think it's prudent to explain to a user something like grid computing, or any far our concept like that, but if they ask you why they're getting a message saying they're running low on virtual memory, would it be such a terrible thing to tell them they're running too many applications at once?
No one wants to deal with someone like that, someone who refuses to teach just creates an unpleasant work environment for everyone. IT certainly isn't the only field that suffers from people like this, it's everywhere. The biggest example that comes to mind is the medical field. Several family members of mine are involved in medicine, many of them are nurses. Many of the doctors they work with like to keep them on a tight leash as they're "only nurses" and must not know very much about medicine
So to the IT people out there reading this, do me a favor, and if someone asks for a little knowledge, hook them up
During my work at the IT center for the VA hospital (which is staffed mostly with army vets, older folk) I would respond to problems that people submitted via a ticketing system. I would find this persons desk or office, and would take care of whatever problem they had, or if I could not, I'd direct them to who could fix their problem
When I would find the person, I'd go through a little friendly chit chat, a lot of times if there was a serious problem it was pretty obvious that the user was nervous that they had messed something up; bringing it down to a more casual level helps to calm the person down a bit, and a little networking never hurts
I would then take a look at the computer and try to find the problem, if the user would watch me work then I would try to explain to them the basics of what I was doing, which directory I was going into (outdated drivers were a huge problem, think 60% of most tickets) or why I was using a specific command like msconfig. Then upon finding the problem, I'd let the user know what had happened and would tell them whether or not it was a quick fix. All in all I did the best I could to create a friendly, passive environment for the user. Also of course if asked any questions I'd do my best to answer them
So an overview of some tips to keep in mind when helping others:
- create a friendly environment
- use connections to what a user knows and understands
- appear confidant, but not arrogant
- avoid saying things like "oh this is a simple problem", be courteous
- try not to go into unnecessary extreme detail
- if a user doesn't want to learn, don't force them
- above all else, treat them with the respect they deserve (that can vary)
Remember; "To teach, is to learn twice"
Twitter vs TV: Let the pigs decide?
Many people have heard the recent scary outbreak of swine flu. It seems to have come from nowhere, but this thing is real. At the time I'm writing this, according to press reports there have been about 1600 reported cases of infection, with about 159 deaths. Yikes, simple math says 10% mortality rate so far...
Many people are saying they don't have to worry about swine flu because all the cases they're hearing about seem to come from Mexico. Well I hate to tell ya but there have been over 40 reported cases in the US, with half of them coming in from New York. Disease spreads fast in big cities. (Glad I'm out of Boston on the 6th!)
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been making use of the popular social networking site Twitter to warn people about swine flu. They are giving people tips on how to avoid contracting the flu, and if infected, how to avoid passing it on to others.
http://twitter.com/cdcemergency (21,000 followers)
and
http://twitter.com/CDC_eHealth (2,600 followers)
These Twitter accounts are making use of the widespread use of Twitter to get word out about swine flu. Anyone following these Twitter profiles will see immediately when a new "tweet" has come out regarding any new information about the outbreak. Of course this is still being reported on television, but given the extreme popularity of twitter, whos to say which medium is quicker for spreading information?
In my opinion the CDC made an excellent decision to use twitter to pass on information about swine flu, it can only help. This is a brilliant example against all the naysayers of social networking sites, and I look forward to seeing more technology being used this way
For those interested, google has put together this map which traces known cases of swine flu. Lets hope the cure is found soon
Check out this video, it's fairly informative, interview with an infected family in Texas:
Many people are saying they don't have to worry about swine flu because all the cases they're hearing about seem to come from Mexico. Well I hate to tell ya but there have been over 40 reported cases in the US, with half of them coming in from New York. Disease spreads fast in big cities. (Glad I'm out of Boston on the 6th!)
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been making use of the popular social networking site Twitter to warn people about swine flu. They are giving people tips on how to avoid contracting the flu, and if infected, how to avoid passing it on to others.
http://twitter.com/cdcemergency (21,000 followers)
and
http://twitter.com/CDC_eHealth (2,600 followers)
These Twitter accounts are making use of the widespread use of Twitter to get word out about swine flu. Anyone following these Twitter profiles will see immediately when a new "tweet" has come out regarding any new information about the outbreak. Of course this is still being reported on television, but given the extreme popularity of twitter, whos to say which medium is quicker for spreading information?
In my opinion the CDC made an excellent decision to use twitter to pass on information about swine flu, it can only help. This is a brilliant example against all the naysayers of social networking sites, and I look forward to seeing more technology being used this way
For those interested, google has put together this map which traces known cases of swine flu. Lets hope the cure is found soon
Check out this video, it's fairly informative, interview with an infected family in Texas:
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